Various attempts at providing a dispenser particularly suitable for dispensing bread or similarly stacked objects have existed for some time in prior art. The devices illustrative of this type of dispensing mechanism include the following five patents, Nos. 1,973,867, 2,226,626, 2,626,575, 3,298,568 and 3,558,006. Of these five, perhaps the patents to Cook, LeBrocq and Mann most closely exemplify the preferred techniques associated with such type dispensing in that they all rely upon the effect of gravity in order to dispense the articles and the doors disposed along the lower face of the dispensers are provided with in one instance a lip to assure dispensing for only one slice of bread, a rotateable valve which increases the likelihood that only one slice of bread will be dispensed without carrying along a portion of the second successive piece, and in the cracker dispenser a vertical wall terminates in a curve that extends horizontally outward to guide the crackers outwardly.
These dispensers are deficient in that in the first case, the likelihood of dispensing bread without jamming the machine (since bread may or may not be a semi-rigid object) is not guaranteed by the withholding mechanism that constrains the piece of bread next to the one being dispensed. In the second case the valve structure does not assure that the second piece of bread will not become caught within the dispensing orifice, and in the third case the freshness of the cracker or bread can not be maintained for any extended period of time.
Furthermore, these dispensing devices rely primarily upon a somewhat quick turnover rate to assure that the last slice of bread will approximately have the same freshness as the first, since the sealing means to exclude air from the environment is merely concidental in their structures.